Chapter 2. Of Slang, Jargon, and Techspeak

Linguists usually refer to informal language as ‘slang’ and
reserve the term ‘jargon’ for the technical vocabularies of
various occupations. However, the ancestor of this collection was called the
‘Jargon File’, and hacker slang is traditionally ‘the
jargon’. When talking about the jargon there is therefore no convenient
way to distinguish it from what a linguist would call
hackers' jargon — the formal vocabulary they learn from textbooks,
technical papers, and manuals.

To make a confused situation worse, the line between hacker slang and
the vocabulary of technical programming and computer science is fuzzy, and
shifts over time. Further, this vocabulary is shared with a wider technical
culture of programmers, many of whom are not hackers and do not speak or
recognize hackish slang.

Accordingly, this lexicon will try to be as precise as the facts of
usage permit about the distinctions among three categories:

without qualifier, denotes informal ‘slangy’ language
peculiar to or predominantly found among hackers — the subject of
this lexicon.

techspeak

the formal technical vocabulary of programming, computer
science, electronics, and other fields connected to hacking.

This terminology will be consistently used throughout the remainder of
this lexicon.

The jargon/techspeak distinction is the delicate one. A lot of
techspeak originated as jargon, and there is a steady continuing uptake of
jargon into techspeak. On the other hand, a lot of jargon arises from
overgeneralization of techspeak terms (there is more about this in the Jargon Construction section below).

In general, we have considered techspeak any term that communicate
primarily by a denotation well established in textbooks, technical
dictionaries, or standards documents.

A few obviously techspeak terms (names of operating systems, languages,
or documents) are listed when they are tied to hacker folklore that isn't
covered in formal sources, or sometimes to convey critical historical
background necessary to understand other entries to which they are
cross-referenced. Some other techspeak senses of jargon words are listed in
order to make the jargon senses clear; where the text does not specify that a
straight technical sense is under discussion, these are marked with
‘[techspeak]’ as an etymology. Some entries have a primary sense
marked this way, with subsequent jargon meanings explained in terms of it.

We have also tried to indicate (where known) the apparent origins of
terms. The results are probably the least reliable information in the
lexicon, for several reasons. For one thing, it is well known that many
hackish usages have been independently reinvented multiple times, even among
the more obscure and intricate neologisms. It often seems that the generative
processes underlying hackish jargon formation have an internal logic so
powerful as to create substantial parallelism across separate cultures and
even in different languages! For another, the networks tend to propagate
innovations so quickly that ‘first use’ is often impossible to pin
down. And, finally, compendia like this one alter what they observe by
implicitly stamping cultural approval on terms and widening their use.

Despite these problems, the organized collection of jargon-related oral
history for the new compilations has enabled us to put to rest quite a number
of folk etymologies, place credit where credit is due, and illuminate the
early history of many important hackerisms such as
kluge, cruft, and
foo. We believe specialist lexicographers will find
many of the historical notes more than casually instructive.